A question about the great Einstein?
Over the years that I was teaching mathematics to highschool and community college students here in California, the non-hackers and grunt-brains would tell me, when I reproved them for not studying or applying themselves, "Mr. (me), Albert Einstein couldn't even tie his shoes until he was twelve!" or some other preposterous bit of slander against the genius, to justify their own stupidity and lack of intellectual curiosity.
Now, my skateboarding glue-sniffer-of-a-grandson has infuriated me by saying the same thing when I told him to turn-off the damned video game and work on his trigonemetric ratios (I knew all of them by the time I was his age, fourteen).
Did the great Einstein truly have learning disabilities? Source, please, and Wikipedia doesn't count.
By the way: I couldn't tie my own shoes until I was twelve, either. As a boy in western Ireland, we all wore woolen sandals ("pampooties")!
Thanks, my fellow Einstein-admirers!
He had a language delay, but was precocious in math and science. This combination is quite common, so much so that it has been called "Einstein syndrom"--like a mild form of Autism or Asbergers.
He was a very good student once he got his language issues sorted out (age 7-8 or so). But he was bored by the style of teaching by rote that was in fashion at the time, so he didn't perform quite as well as he might have. His problem was the opposite of your kids'--too much intellectual curiosity to be satisfied by regurgitation-style learning. He flourished when he figured out to do what was required to please his instructors and satisfy his own interests by studying outside of class.
The wiki article on his early life answers your question directly and has plenty good references if you care to look them up to get something more solid.
Benny Hinn - God Created YOU for Fellowship
